"Preach the gospel at all times; if necessary, use words." Saint Francis of Assisi

Thursday, March 06, 2008

Benay's Surprise

What do you do when you want to surprise someone special for their birthday without them knowing about it? You throw a surprise birthday party three weeks after their birthday and you do it on a non five year birthday (30,35,etc) which typically are reserved for big parties. This is what we did for Benay last Saturday night. We invited a bunch of people who love Benay to help her celebrate her birthday. I took her out for a date day and when we came back that night everyone was in our house waiting for her. Let's just say she had no idea what was going on when she entered the house. She actually thought they were singing for another reason. It took her a few seconds to realize that everything was for her. Here's what it looked like. Excuse the first 15 seconds of sound but no picture but one of Bronwyn's friends started filming with the lens covered and kept filming like that until Ansley saved the day and took the cap off.


For those interested in Portuguese and want to know what was said after the singing stopped, Benay told everyone that her birthday had already passed. Our angel brother Matt then told her that it's always good to have an angel nearby.

After the initial shock, she made her way around the room and hugged everyone. She was then taken to another room to be transformed for the costume party.
Carys and Bronwyn did the honors of turning their mom into a cat.
Then it was present time.
We then sang happy birthday and ate some great cake that Bronwyn made. Benay, as is her nature, wanted to include some other people who had birthday's close to hers. So, Marcia and Rudinei had happy birthday sung to them as well. This was followed by everyone watching a video that Ansley made for her mom with pictures set to music. We had a projector set up to show it on a wall in our backyard but it didn't work out so everyone enjoyed the show on our laptop. The video showed pictures from birth to now. Everyone enjoyed it. Ansley did a great job. Benay is an extremly blessed woman. She has so many people in her life that love her.

Teenagers love Benay. Football players love Benay. Clowns and jokers love Benay. Big families love Benay. Small families love Benay. Eleven year old boys who normally hate being kissed by a grown up will allow themselves to be kissed by Benay because they love her. Even tangerines love Benay. Doctors, soldiers and pirates love Benay. (I love this picture because our brother João is a pilot in the military and his wife, Clarice, is a doctor. They enjoyed a little role reversal on this night.)Angels love Benay. Spiderman, sports fans and hippies love Benay. Pirates love Benay. Super heroes (notice the Wolverine sideburns shaved special for Benay's party) and their wives love Benay. Even witches love Benay. But, most especially, our kids love Benay. These two girls love her so much that they literally spent the whole day cooking and cleaning and making sure everything was just right for their mom's special party. Benay is very blessed to have kids that love her so much!All in all it was a great party and everyone had a good time.

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